I have a problem and I am writing about it because I want to know if anyone else has the same problem.

When I start a new project I get really overwhelmed.

My dream project for the last few years has been to write a synthesizer application. Every time I start to think about writing this application I get incredibly overwhelmed by a lot of things:

• How much math do I need to know how to do?
• What kind of synthesizer do I want to write?
• Oh shit, everything is in C++. How much C++ do I need to know?!
• Can I use this audio programming book that’s in C++ if everything in it assumes you’re using Windows?
• How do I do the user interface?
• How do I fit all these little elements on an iPhone? Can I lay it out differently?
• Do I need to know OpenGL to do a decent user interface?

So I get super overwhelmed and I sit down to try to figure out one of these things.

I sit down to learn C++ so I can read the book on audio programming.

I figure out that I don’t understand the math and I get freaked out and I try to learn the math.

Then at a certain point I get overwhelmed, feel stupid, and curl up on the floor crying because I am stupid and will never amount to anything and I should just give up on programming because I am a failure and should just go back to working at Target.

This doesn’t just happen with my personal projects. Sometimes this happens at work too.

At my previous job I had to learn a bunch of stuff about network programming. I have never done network programming and I honestly never want to do it ever again. I had people telling me to play with Paw to learn network programming. I don’t know what Paw is supposed to do. If I don’t know what it is doing, how do I play with it? I have no context for anything I am doing, so I wind up in this creepy, paralyzing mental mode where I am grappling with a bunch of unfamiliar terminology that has no context and if I can’t do my job I will get fired and I can’t pay my mortgage and I will be homeless and it makes me curl up on the floor breathing into a brown paper bag.

How do I avoid this?

Learn by Doing

I know from my own personal experience that I learn better by doing.

For a really long time I learned by doing a lot of tutorials. The first time I would do a tutorial I would have the overwhelming paralyzing feeling of not knowing what I was doing, but then I would do the tutorial over and over again a few times until I got the feel for what I was doing.

Back when I was a full time student and had the luxury of time, I could do this 60-80 hours a week. It was kind of magical about how by the third or fourth time I totally understood what I was doing.

Then I went out into the job market and started to mentally feel like I couldn’t do this and have tried to find ways around it. I used to keep trying to do tutorials, but I would only have time to do them once and I would be stuck in the paralyzed overwhelming stage, so I stopped doing that.

The only way to learn and grow is to write code.

You start with a blank project and you ask yourself how to make something work. That gives you the first step you have to take to find your answer.

I know this. I have experienced this. So why does it always take me by surprise when I figure this out for the fortieth time??

Lazy Information Initialization

I noticed I tend to get overstimulated and unfocused when I have to start on something. I tend to shave yaks.

I think that I can read a book on math for 3D graphics programming and learn all about that before I start a project rather than going in and just learning what I need to know to do what I need to do.

I do things that seem like work but aren’t actually productive.

I know on some level that trying to learn this difficult way by reading math books in the bath tub is not helpful and actively causes me mental harm. But I feel guilty if I am not working and I have adopted a lot of destructive behaviors that feel like work and make me feel like I am being productive that are making me less productive.

As I have gotten more and more burned out I have worked harder and harder on these self destructive tendencies because I haven’t known how to break out of them.

I have noticed at most of my jobs there is an implicit feel that working on code that does not directly go into a project is considered wasteful. Saying I am going to set up a sample project to learn a concept sounds unproductive and people would really rather that you work directly on the code base or read documentation. (Except when I worked for Brad. He did this stuff all the time and this is where I got this idea from and I finally started getting it through my thick head.)

In my experience, those things don’t work nearly as effectively.

I am trying to be better about asserting what I need to be a productive programmer even if it’s not what people want to hear. It’s not enough to just say “I need to do these things.” I also have to put them into practice.

And part of putting those into practice is to stop doing these destructive behaviors that make me feel like I am doing something when I am actually destroying my ability to function.

I think it’s important to understand how we learn and to stick to it even when other people don’t want to hear about it. It’s really easy to do a bunch of things that make you feel busy but aren’t getting you anywhere.

I am sick of feeling tired and burned out all the time because I am doing things that I know don’t actually help me. I am trying to figure out how to be a more productive person because my career and my mental health depend on it. This is too important to ignore and wait to resolve itself.

So I am not going to exhaust myself reading programming and math books with no context. I am going to do more sample projects and I will only learn what I need to know to solve a problem with my code. I am not going to expel a lot of energy on something that causes mental friction and generates heat that burns me out. I will only use energy on things that are actively productive. I will be less tired and less hurt this way.